We no longer respond well to cold calls, rarely watch advertisements on TV, are seldom interested in email newsletters, hardly ever attracted by banners, and generally, ignore irritating in-your-face marketing materials that clearly try selling us something. This behavior of ours has a significant impact on the market. Agencies, advertisers, marketers understand that it makes no sense to create content that most people ignore, so they must find new ways of capturing an audience.
Consequently, marketers must anticipate trends and stay ahead of the curve today, if they want to still be relevant tomorrow. Marketers must perfect their storytelling techniques if they wish to stay competitive in the battle for the audience’s attention. This means rekindling creativity, reinventing design, and creating stories that people want to learn more about. The task of a modern-day marketer is to revamp a brand, make it more attractive, bold, trendy, and relevant.
This can easily be achieved by using effective visual storytelling techniques. Keep on reading if you like learning more about visual trends that define modern-day storytelling!
What is Visual Storytelling About?
It sure sounds cool, but what visual storytelling actually implies? In simple terms, it is a way of telling a story without using words, but instead using pictures, video, animations, etc. There are no strict rules as to how much text can accompany a visual story, but visual storytelling still implies that images (and not text) convey the essence of the narrative.
In the digital age, storytelling does more than simply grab and hold the audience’s attention – it is an effective digital tool for increasing conversion and managing a brand’s reputation. Visual storytelling is capable of changing perception, touching the heart, and engaging any viewer if you use it correctly. It is an art that is actively monetized by thousands of marketers and webmasters today. No successful website is currently complete without storytelling – it helps with attracting an audience through articles, reviews, social networks, blogs, videos, etc.
In 2021, it is not enough for companies to maintain social media accounts, have a responsive website, and invest in PR campaigns to be successful. Modern-day companies must generate content that engages viewers from the get-go, nurturing the loyalty of current customers and attracting new ones. This is where visual content comes in! There are heaps of storytelling statistics that support this idea. According to 2021 statistics, any marketing information that is accompanied by a relevant visual component is 55% more effective than plain text. Also, it is estimated that about 80% of businesses will strongly rely on visual content to engage customers in 2021.
Therefore, there are many reasons for integrating visual storytelling in marketing and customer communication. Leading social networks like YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest have been betting on visual content for a long time. Even back in 2016, users didn’t spend more than 2 seconds on average on a single publication, which proves that using complex text materials on social media is not the right way to engage the attention of your viewers. In this and most other scenarios, high-quality targeted visual content is the ultimate solution, which only proves the value of visual storytelling.
Curiously, digital storytelling can be used as a successful educational tool as well. Some universities use visual stories to drive the student’s attention to the subject and offer details in an entertaining way, while others give assignments to create their own digital stories. Such assignments are effective, but very time-consuming to create, leaving little time for regular writing tasks. If this is the case with you, you can contact TrustMyPaper and get help with your academic writing.
However, education sometimes demands more than just completing regular writing tasks –assignments often get so complicated that many students have no choice but to use special services, such as Supreme Dissertation to help them get through the most lengthy and challenging writing assignments. You can enlist their help too if your academic load gets out of hand.
Top 5 Trends of Visual Storytelling Today
Companies all across the globe work hard every day, creating engaging visual stories. An important aspect of said stories is their uniqueness, but even so, if we look closely we can see main trends that stand out. Here are just a couple of aspects that characterize modern-day visual storytelling:
1. Use of Humor
Viewers like and best respond to content that is relatable, and it’s hard for them to engage with it unless it has some kind of comedic aspect. Modern visual storytelling often uses hilarious puns, memes, and jokes to connect with viewers. If the use of humor is precise and well-rationed, content is capable of truly captivating the viewer.
Experience shows that companies should not be afraid of communicating with their customers on a personal level, even if it means making fun of themselves. While humor is hard getting right, our best advice is to try to use it in line with your brand’s voice and values. Humor should be cohesive with your brand’s “flavor” and carefully incorporated into broader marketing and storytelling strategy.
The brands with the best and most authentic tone of voice are the ones who know deeply who they are and what makes them special. These brands understand how their customers perceive them, as well as their needs and desires. The secret to good humorous visual storytelling is delivering a company’s ideas, values, and information about products using a smart communication style that relieves boredom. Additionally, it is proven that if the message is “spiced up” with humor it is easier for viewers to digest as well as remember.
2. Stories Based on Real Data
Stories that are based on real data are a trend worth investigating because it gives people accurate, relevant and comprehensive research-based information. For example, one can use Google Trends to leverage the power of statistics and use it in their marketing strategy, as they show you what terms and topics users are looking for in different regions of the world. Such information can shed light on the fact that a particular topic is of the public’s concern.
Data-driven stories are also well suited for companies that are gathering information themselves. For example, Spotify analyzes its data evaluating which tracks users enjoy the most.
They use these findings, summarize yearly application use for premium subscribers, letting a person see which song or artist they enjoyed the most. By offering this data, Spotify can help people understand how the service has impacted their lives throughout the year, showcasing its practical value for users based on actual data.
3. Increasing Use of Podcasts
Podcasting is becoming an increasingly popular way to watch the news, comedic content, and more. Podcasts reach listeners in a wide variety of formats, but most of them tell stories. It is proven that people who hear ads on podcasts remember the brand. Today listening to a podcast is a popular trendy way of learning something interesting. Same as music, you can play them anywhere – in your car while jogging, etc.
For example, recent statistics show that half of Americans regularly play podcasts, while 24% enjoy them every week. This number is increasing, showing the growing popularity of podcasts and proving that they can be an effective marketing channel.
4. Digital Realty as a Mean of Visual Storytelling and Marketing
In addition to conveying stories through text and video, brand managers tend to increasingly explore possibilities associated with digital reality. For example, National Geographic employs this trend by allowing a 360-degree video experience of observing an elephant herd, as well as using augmented reality to showcase the effects of climate change. No one can argue that such visual content is more striking and engaging, and thus more effective. Such use of visual storytelling is in line with the National Geographic brand, promotes research, and inspires people to.
5. Inclusive design
Inclusive design involves making products or services available to as many people as possible without it needing adaptation for different audiences. The goal of inclusive design in visual storytelling is to take into account the diversity of people in order to create a level playing field for everyone who is viewing the content.
Companies appeal to many audiences, and among them, there may be people who, for one reason or another, cannot perceive content in standard formats. One way to remedy that is by adding a short description to a photo before publication so that it can be read by a text-reproducing device for the visually impaired. For example, statistics by WHO show that there are about 1 billion people in the world who suffer from various disabilities. You will be able to reach more audiences by providing inclusive visual content that will make your storytelling marketing extra effective.
Our Findings
We live within constant never-ending information noise. Social networks, messengers, websites are full of useful or not very useful information. Over time, we have learned to filter content and perceive only what we are really interested in. Such selectively is good for the user, but bad for a marketer. The audience, sick of direct advertising, stopped responding to straightforward marketing hooks, and that is when smart marketers decided to turn to storytelling. We hope that the visual storytelling trends we highlighted today will inspire you to create your own original, attention-grabbing one-of-a-kind stories that will keep your viewers glued to a screen!
